What Was Lost

Kate Meaney, inspired by the book How to Be a Detective, trawls her local area, checking out potentially suspicious characters. With her sidekick Mickey, a stuffed monkey dressed in a "pin-striped gangster suit with spats", she forms Falcon Investigations, and, desperately in need of a crime to solve, the pair begin hanging round Green Oaks, the local shopping centre. But just as they seem on the cusp of an adventure, O'Flynn's narrative jumps forward 20 years to 2004, when Green Oaks is a vast behemoth, inhabited by hordes of people aimlessly drifting as they seek to cope with the emptiness and boredom of their lives. Haunted by images of a little girl caught on a surveillance camera and the discovery of the discarded Mickey, Kurt, a security guard, and Lisa, a jaded record store employee, begin to unravel a forgotten mystery. A detective-cum-ghost story, O'Flynn's debut tempers the dysfunctionality of urban living with incisive humour and delves with impressive insight into the innocently inquiring young mind of her diminutive heroine.